In their newest video, they take viewers on a whirlwind tour of their 10 favorite things about Italy, the latest stop on their world tour. It begins with an Italian grandma, expertly shaping and cutting dough with her wrinkled hands, then unraveling the sturdy finished ribbons as if to say “ta-da!” It just gets better from there: pizza, cheese, meat, truffles, olive oil, wine–the list goes on.

We scored some exclusive photos (above!) and caught up with the busy twosome to talk about the generosity of the Italians, the most difficult thing about being in Italy, and one very happy moment that happened in a cave full of Parmesan.

And if all this talk about prosciutto and pizza makes you want to impulse purchase a plane ticket, the Perennial Plate and its partner, Intrepid, are giving away a FREE trip to Italy. So you should totally enter to win.

Italy is a wildly popular travel destination. In what ways did you and Mirra approach your trip that made it a different experience?

Daniel Klein: In our newest video, we name ten things we love about Italy. Pasta, pizza, balsamico, prosciutto, wine, olive oil, things like that. Searching out these ten things and filming how they were made gave us an opportunity to meet different types of people. We actually stayed with an American couple that owns a bread and breakfast in Marche, a much less visited region of Italy. They’ve become immersed in their local culture, so they hooked us up with the Italian grandmother who makes that amazing pasta in the video. And they had a friend who’s a truffle dealer, who ended up giving us a huge bag of truffles that was worth roughly $500.

We’re super jealous.

DK: Yeah. We used all of them in one pasta dish!

No way.

DK: It was very good.

So on your quest to find all of your favorite Italian foods, which was your favorite?

DK: My favorite was the Parmesan. I had been carrying around an engagement ring in our camera bag for the last month when we were travelling in Spain and Italy. I had worked out a plan to propose to Mirra amid all the Parmesan, and the cheese maker was in on it. So on our tour, he said, “I have a phone call to make,” and left us alone in this couple hundred-year old cave, stacked to the ceiling with cheese. And I proposed, and she said yes. We met in a cheese shop four years ago, so I thought it would be cool to ask her to marry me in a Parmesan cheese shop.

Congratulations!

DK: The funniest part was when the 70-year-old cheesemaker came barging through the door yelling, “Congratulations!” It was great.

Was there another highlight on the trip?

DK: Tasting 40-year-old traditional Balsamic vinegar was incredible. They all start with the same mother, the original 200-year-old vinegar. Another highlight was in Tuscany, we did a story about this family that grows different heirloom wheats and grains, and they make pasta from these biodynamic grains. Our translator cancelled the day before, and no one really spoke each other’s language very well. We had this wonderful lunch with their whole grain pasta, and tried to patch together conversation. We all became friends despite the language barrier, and they sent us home with huge boxes of all their pasta.

Sounds like you guys got lots of great gifts.

DW: Everyone we visited in Italy sent us home with so much food. Throughout all of our experiences, we found out that the Italian people are super generous. Even more than people already think.

Was there anything challenging about filming in Italy?

DK: The most challenging part is that there is way too much to film. We’d drive by dozens of vineyards every day, and incredible markets full of produce, prosciutto, cheese, everything. There’s just so much awesome stuff that it’s impossible to get it all in. Another challenge is that we had these epic lunches with so many different courses–then 8 P.M. rolls around and we’d still be stuffed from everything we ate at lunchtime.

Where in Italy did you have your best meals?

DK: The food in Rome is the best we had in Italy by far. We went to a pizza place and had this really interesting pie, where they put ice onto the dough, then put the whole thing in the oven. The ice cubes melt, then they dump a whole bunch of pecorino onto the pizza, which emulsifies the cheese. So it’s like cacio e pepe, the famous Roman pasta dish. It’s really, really good, and a really creative idea. Like, who thinks of putting ice cubes on their pizza?

Is there anything that you ate that was new to you or Mira?

DK: After the Parmesan engagement, we went to a hotel that’s famous for their culatello caves. We did a comprehensive culatello tasting–some from white pigs, some from black pigs, some aged 9 months, some aged 3 years. There are thousands of these bundles of pork in their caves, and some of them have tags designating where they’re going to–famous people like Alain Ducasse, Thomas Keller, and high-end Italian fashion designers.

Did you guys stick with small mom and pop restaurants, or did you do any fine dining?

DK: We decided to splurge and went to the famous Osteria Francescana.
Massimo Bottura is the chef there, and his wife follows the Perennial Plate, so he sat with us for our entire 3-hour dinner and explained, with great passion, everything we consumed. I’ve never had an experience where the chef is present through the whole meal, explaining the theory behind every dish. A number of them are esoteric, imagining Italy in the past and future, so it was great to have his insight. We’re going to do a whole video on him.